“Tous les raisonnements des hommes ne valent pas unsentiment d'une femme.”
It would seem that Lory de Vasselot had played the part of a stormy petrel when he visited Paris, for that calm Frenchman, the Baron de Mélide, packed his wife off to Provence the same night, and the letter that Lory wrote to the Abbé Susini, reaching Olmeta three days later, aroused its recipient from a contemplative perusal of thePetit Bastiaisas if it had been a bomb-shell.
The abbé threw aside his newspaper and cigarette. He was essentially a man of action. He had been on his feet all day, hurrying hither and thither over his widespread parish, interfering in this man's business and that woman's quarrels with that hastiness which usually characterizes the doings of such as pride themselves upon their capability for action and contempt for mere passive thought. It was now evening, and a blessed cool air was stealing down from the mountains. Successive days of unbroken sunshine had burnt all the western side of the island, had almost dried up the Aliso, which crept, a mere rivulet in its stormy bed, towards St. Florent and the sea.
Susini went to-the window of his little room and opened the wooden shutters. His house is next to the church at Olmeta and faces north-west; so that in the summer the evening sun glares across the valley into its windows. He was no great scholar, and had but a poor record in the archives of the college at Corte. Lory de Vasselot had written in a hurry, and the letter was a long one. Susini read it once, and was turning it to read again, when, glancing out of the window, he saw Denise cross the Place, and go into the church.
“Ah!” he said aloud, “that will save me a long walk.”
Then he read the letter again, with curt nods of the head from time to time, as if Lory were making points or giving minute instructions. He folded the letter, placed it in the pocket of his cassock, and gave himself a smart tap on the chest, as if to indicate that this was the moment and himself the man. He was brisk and full of self-confidence, managing, interfering, commanding, as all true Corsicans are. He took his hat, hardly paused to blow the dust off it, and hurried out into the sunlit Place. He went rather slowly up the church steps, however, for he was afraid of Denise. Her youth, and something spring-like and mystic in her being, disturbed him, made him uneasy and shy; which was perhaps his reason for drawing aside the heavy leather curtain and going into the church, instead of waiting for her outside. He preferred to meet her on his own ground—in the chill air, heavy with the odour of stale incense, and in the dim light of that place where he laid down, in blunt language, his own dim reading of God's law.
He stood just within the curtain, looking at Denise, who was praying on one of the low chairs a few yards away from him; and he was betrayed into a characteristic impatience when she remained longer on her knees than he (as a man) deemed necessary at that moment. He showed his impatience by shuffling with his feet, and still Denise took no notice.
The abbé, by chance or instinct, slipped his hand within his cassock, and drew out the letter which he had just received. The rustle of the thin paper brought Denise to her feet in a moment, facing him.
“The French mail has arrived,” said the priest.
“Yes,” replied Denise, quickly, looking down at his hands.
They were alone in the church which, as a matter of fact, was never very well attended; and the abbé, who had not that respect for God or man which finds expression in a lowered voice, spoke in his natural tones.
“And I have news which affects you, mademoiselle.”
“I suppose that any news of France must do that,” replied Denise, with some spirit.
“Of course—of course,” said the abbé, rubbing his chin with his forefinger, and making a rasping sound on that shaven surface.
He reflected in silence for a moment, and Denise made, in her turn, a hasty movement of impatience. She had only met the abbé once or twice; and all that she knew of him was the fact that he had an imperious way with him which aroused a spirit of opposition in herself.
“Well, Monsieur l'Abbé,” she said, “what is it?”
“It is that Mademoiselle Brun and yourself will have but two hours to prepare for your departure from the Casa Perucca,” he answered. And he drew out a large silver watch, which he consulted with the quiet air of a commander.
Denise glanced at him with some surprise, and then smiled.
“By whose orders, Monsieur l'Abbe?” she inquired with a dangerous gentleness.
Then the priest realized that she meant fight, and all his combativeness leapt, as it were, to meet hers. His eyes flashed in the gloom of the twilit church.
“I, mademoiselle,” he said, with that humility which is nought but an aggravated form of pride. He tapped himself on the chest with such emphasis that a cloud of dust flew out of his cassock, and he blew defiance at her through it. “I—who speak, take the liberty of making this suggestion. I, the Abbé Susini—and your humble servant.”
Which was not true: for he was no man's servant, and only offered to heaven a half-defiant allegiance. Denise wanted to know the contents of the letter he held crushed within his fingers; so she restrained an impulse to answer him hastily, and merely laughed. The priest thought that he had gained his point.
“I can give you two hours,” he said, “in which to make your preparations. At seven o'clock I shall arrive at the Casa Perucca with a carriage, in which to conduct Mademoiselle Brun and yourself to St. Florent, where a yacht is awaiting you.”
Denise bit her lip impatiently, and watched the thin brown fingers that were clenched round the letter.
“Then what is your news from France?” she asked. “From whence is your letter—from the front?”
“It is from Paris,” answered the abbé, unfolding the paper carelessly; and Denise would not have been human had she resisted the temptation to try and decipher it.
“And—?”
“And,” continued the abbé, shrugging his shoulders, “I have nothing to add, mademoiselle. You must quit Perucca before the morning. The news is bad, I tell you frankly. The empire is tottering to its fall, and the news that I have in secret will be known all over Corsica to-morrow. Who knows? the island may flare up like a heap of bracken, and no one bearing a French name, or known to have French sympathies, will be safe. You know how you yourself are regarded in Olmeta. It is foolhardy to venture here this evening.”
Denise shrugged her shoulders. She had plenty of spirit, and, at all events, that courage which refuses to admit the existence of danger. Perhaps she was not thinking of danger, or of herself, at all.
“Then the Count Lory de Vasselot has ordered us out of Corsica?” she asked.
“Mademoiselle, we are wasting time,” answered the priest, folding the letter and replacing it in his pocket. “A yacht is awaiting you off St. Florent. All is organized—”
“By the Count Lory de Vasselot?”
The abbé stamped his foot impatiently.
“Bon Dieu, mademoiselle!” he cried, “you will make me lose my temper. The yacht, I tell you, is at the entrance of the bay, and by to-morrow morning it will be halfway to France. You cannot stay here. You must make your choice between returning to France and going into the Watrin barracks at Bastia. Colonel Gilbert will, I fancy, know how to make you obey him. And all Corsica is in the hands of Colonel Gilbert—though no one but Colonel Gilbert knows that.”
He spoke rapidly, thrusting forward his dark, eager face, forgetting all his shyness, glaring defiance into her quiet eyes.
“There, mademoiselle—and now your answer?”
“Would it not be well if the Count Lory de Vasselot attended to his own affairs at the Château de Vasselot, and the interests he has there?” replied Denise, turning away from his persistent eyes.
And the abbé's face dropped as if she had shot him.
“Good!” he said, after a moment's hesitation. “I wash my hands of you. You refuse to go?”
“Yes,” answered Denise, going towards the door with a high head, and, it is possible, an aching heart. For the two often go together.
And the abbé, a man little given to the concealment of his feelings, shook his fist at the leather curtain as it fell into place behind her.
“Ah—these women!” he said aloud. “A secret that is thirty years old!”
Denise hurried down the steps and away from the village. She knew that the postman, having passed through Olmeta, must now be on the high-road on his way to Perucca, and she felt sure that he must have in his bag the letter of which she had followed, in imagination, the progress during the last three days.
“Now it is in the train from Paris to Marseilles; now it is on board the Persévérance, steaming across the Gulf of Lyons,” had been her thought night and morning. “Now it is at Bastia,” she had imagined on waking at dawn that day. And at length she had it now, in thought, close to her on the Olmeta road in front of her.
At a turn of the road she caught sight of the postman, trudging along beneath the heavy chestnut trees. Then at length she overtook him, and he stopped to open the bag slung across his shoulder. He was a silent man, who saluted her awkwardly, and handed her several letters and a newspaper. With another salutation he walked on, leaving Denise standing by the low wall of the road alone. There was only one letter for her. She turned it over and examined the seal: a bare sword with a gay French motto beneath it—the device of the Vasselots.
She opened the envelope after a long pause. It contained nothing but her own travel-stained letter, of which the seal had not been broken. And, as she thoughtfully examined both envelopes, there glistened in her eyes that light which it is vouchsafed to a few men to see, and which is the nearest approach to the light of heaven that ever illumines this poor earth. For love has, among others, this peculiarity: that it may live in the same heart with a great anger, and seems to gain only strength from the proximity.
Denise replaced the two letters in her pocket and walked on. A carriage passed her, and she received a curt bow and salutation from the Abbé Susini who was in it. The carriage turned to the right at the crossroads, and rattled down the hill in the direction of Vasselot. Denise's head went an inch higher at the sight of it.
“I met the Abbé Susini at Olmeta,” she said to Mademoiselle Brun, a few minutes later in the great bare drawing-room of the Casa Perucca. “And he transmitted the Count de Vasselot's command that we should leave the Casa Perucca to-night for France. I suggested that the order should be given to the Château de Vasselot instead of the Casa Perucca, and the abbé took me at my word. He has gone to the Château de Vasselot now in a carriage.”
Mademoiselle Brun, who was busy with her work near the window, laid aside her needle and looked at Denise. She had a faculty of instantly going, as it were, to the essential part of a question and tearing the heart out of it: which faculty is, with all respect, more a masculine than a feminine quality. She ignored the side-issues and pounced, as it were, upon the central thread—the reason that Lory de Vasselot had had for sending such an order. She rose and tore open the newspaper, glanced at the war-news, and laid it aside. Then she opened a letter addressed to herself. It was on superlatively thick paper and bore a coronet in one corner.
“My Dear” (it ran),
“This much I have learnt from two men who will tell me nothing—France is lost. The Holy Virgin help us!
“Your devoted
“Jane De Mélide.”
Mademoiselle Brun turned away to the window, and stood there with her back to Denise for some moments. At length she came back, and the girl saw something in the grey and wizened face which stirred her heart, she knew not why; for all great thoughts and high qualities have power to illumine the humblest countenance.
“You may stay here if you like,” said Mademoiselle Brun, “but I am going back to France to-night.”
“What do you mean?”
For reply Mademoiselle Brun handed her the Baroness de Mélide's letter.
“Yes,” said Denise, when she had read the note. “But I do not understand.”
“No. Because you never knew your father—the bravest man God ever created. But some other man will teach you some day.”
“Teach me what?” asked Denise, looking with wonder at the little woman. “Of what are you thinking?”
“Of that of which Lory de Vasselot, and Henri de Mélide, and Jane, and all good Frenchmen and Frenchwomen are thinking at this moment—of France, and only France,” said Mademoiselle Brun; and out of her mouse-like eyes there shone, at that moment, the soul of a man—and of a brave man.
Her lips quivered for a moment, before she shut them with a snap. Perhaps Denise wanted to be persuaded to return to France. Perhaps the blood that ran in her veins was stirred by the spirit of Mademoiselle Brun, whose arguments were short and sharp, as became a woman much given to economy in words. At all events, the girl listened in silence while mademoiselle explained that even two women might, in some minute degree, help France at this moment. For patriotism, like courage, is infectious; and it is a poor heart that hurries to abandon a sinking ship.
It thus came about that, soon after sunset, Mademoiselle Brun and Denise hurried down to the cross-roads to intercept the carriage, of which they could perceive the lights slowly approaching across the dark valley of Vasselot.
“We do squint each through his loophole,And then dream broad heavenIs but the patch we see.”
It was almost dark when the abbé's carriage reached the valley, and the driver paused to light the two stable-lanterns tied with string to the dilapidated lamp-brackets. The abbé was impatient, and fidgeted in his seat. He was at heart an autocrat, and hated to be defied even by one over whom he could not pretend to have control. He snapped his finger and thumb as he thought of Denise.
“She puzzles me,” he muttered. “What does she want? Bon Dieu, what does she want?”
Then he spoke angrily to the driver, whose movements were slow and clumsy.
“At all events my task is easier here,” he consoled himself by saying as the carriage approached the château, “now that I am rid of these women.”
At last they reached the foot of the slope leading up to the half-ruined house, which loomed against the evening sky immediately above them; and the driver pulled up his restive horses with an air significant of arrival.
“Right up to the château,” cried the Abbé from beneath the hood.
But the man made no movement, and sat on the box muttering to himself.
“What!” cried the abbé, who had caught some words. “Jean has the evil eye! What of Jean's evil eye? Here, I will give you my rosary to put round your coward's neck. No! Then down you get, my friend. You can wait here till we come back.”
As he spoke he leapt out, and, climbing into the box, pushed the driver unceremoniously from his seat, snatching the reins and whip from his hands.
“He!” he cried. “Allons, my little ones!”
And with whip and voice he urged the horses up the slope at a canter, while the carriage swayed across from one great tree to another. They reached the summit in safety, and the priest pulled the horses up at the great door—the first carriage to disturb the quiet of that spot for nearly a generation. He twisted the reins round the whip-socket, and clambering down rang the great bell. It answered to his imperious summons by the hollow clang that betrays an empty house. No one came. He stood without, drumming with his fist on the doorpost. Then he turned to listen. Some one was approaching from the darkness of the trees. But it was only the driver following sullenly on foot.
“Here!” said the priest, recognizing him. “Go to your horses!”
As he spoke he was already untying one of the stable-lanterns that swung at the lamp-bracket. His eyes gleamed beneath the brim of his broad hat. He was quick and anxious.
“Wait here till I come back,” he said; and, keeping close to the wall, he disappeared among the low bushes.
There was another way in by a door half hidden among the ivy, which Jean used for his mysterious comings and goings, and of which the abbé had a key. He had brought it with him to-night by a lucky chance. He had to push aside the ivy which hung from the walls in great ropes, and only found the keyhole after a hurried search. But the lock was in good order. Jean, it appeared, was a careful man.
Susini hurried through a long passage to the little round room where the Count de Vasselot had lived so long. He stopped with his nose in the air, and sniffed aloud. The atmosphere was heavy with the smell of stale tobacco, and yet there could be detected the sweeter odour of smoke scarcely cold. The room must have been inhabited only a few hours ago. The abbé opened the window, and the smell of carnations swept in like the breath of another world. He returned to the room, and, opening his lantern, lighted a candle that stood on the mantelpiece. He looked round. Sundry small articles in daily use—the count's pipe, his old brass tobacco-box: a few such things that a man lives with, and puts in his pocket when he goes away—were missing.
“Buon Diou! Buon Diou! Buon Diou—gone!” muttered the priest, lapsing into his native dialect. He looked around him with keen eyes—at the blackened walls, at the carpet worn into holes. “That Jean must have known something that I do not know. All the same, I shall look through the house.”
He blew out the candle, and taking the lantern quitted the room. He searched the whole house—passing from empty room to empty room. The reception-rooms were huge and sparingly furnished with those thin-legged chairs and ancient card-tables which recall the days of Letitia Ramolino and that easy-going Charles Buonaparte, who brought into the world the greatest captain that armies have ever seen. The bedrooms were small: all alike smelt of mouldering age. In one room the abbé stopped and raised his inquiring nose; the room had been inhabited by a woman—years and years ago.
He searched the house from top to bottom, and there was no one in it. The abbé had failed in the two missions confided to him by Lory, and he was one to whom failure was peculiarly bitter. With respect to the two women, he had perhaps scarcely expected to succeed, for he had lived fifty years in the world, and his calling had brought him into daily contact with that salutary chastening of the spirit which must assuredly be the lot of a man who seeks to enforce his will upon women. But his failure to find the old Count de Vasselot was a more serious matter.
He returned slowly to the carriage, and told the driver to return to Olmeta.
“I have changed my plans,” he said, still mindful of the secret he had received with other pastoral charges from his predecessor. “Jean is not in the château, so I shall not go to St. Florent to-night.”
He leant forward, and looked up at the old castle outlined against the sky. A breeze was springing up with the suddenness of all atmospheric changes in these latitudes, and the old trees creaked and groaned, while the leaves had already that rustling brittleness of sound that betokens the approach of autumn.
As they crossed the broad valley the wind increased, sweeping up the course of the Aliso in wild gusts. It was blowing a gale before the horses fell to a quick walk up the hill; and Mademoiselle Brun's small figure, planted in the middle of the road, was the first indication that the driver had of the presence of the two women, though the widow Andrei, who accompanied them and carried their travelling-bags, had already called out more than once.
“The Abbé Susini?” cried Mademoiselle Brun, in curt interrogation.
In reply, the driver pointed to the inside of the carriage with the handle of his whip.
“You are alone?” said mademoiselle, in surprise.
The light of the lantern shone brightly on her, and on the dimmer form of Denise, silent and angry in the background; for Denise had allowed her inclination to triumph over her pride, which conquest usually leaves a sore heart behind it.
“But, yes!” answered the abbé; alighting quickly enough.
He guessed instantly that Denise had changed her mind, and was indiscreet enough to put his thoughts into words.
“So mademoiselle has thought better of it?” he said; and got no answer for his pains.
Both Mademoiselle Brun and Denise were looking curiously at the interior of the carriage from which the priest emerged, leaving it, as they noted, empty.
“There is yet time to go to St. Florent?” inquired the elder woman.
The priest grabbed at his hat as a squall swept up the road, whirling the dust high above their heads.
“Whether we shall get on board is another matter,” he muttered by way of answer. “Come, get into the carriage; we have no time to lose. It will be a bad night at sea.”
“Then, for my sins I shall be sea-sick,” said Mademoiselle Brun, imperturbably.
She took her bag from the hand of the widow Andrei, and would have it nowhere but on her lap, where she held it during the rapid drive, sitting bolt upright, staring straight in front of her into the face of the abbé.
No one spoke, for each had thoughts sufficient to occupy the moment. Susini perhaps had the narrowest vein of reflection upon which to draw, and therefore fidgeted in his seat and muttered to himself, for his mental range was limited to Olmeta and the Château de Vasselot. Mademoiselle Brun was thinking of France—of her great past and her dim, uncertain future. While Denise sat stiller and more silent than either, for her thoughts were at once as wide as the whole world, and as narrow as the human heart.
At a turn in the road she looked up, and saw the sharp outline of the Casa Perucca, black and sombre against a sky now lighted by a rising moon, necked and broken by heavy clouds, with deep lurking shadows and mountains of snowy whiteness. In the Casa Perucca she had learnt what life means, and no man or woman ever forgets the place where that lesson has been acquired.
“I shall come back,” she whispered, looking up at the great rock with its giant pines and the two square chimneys half hidden in the foliage.
And the Abbé Susini, seeing a movement of her lips, glanced curiously at her. He was still wondering what she wanted. “Mon Dieu,” he was reflecting a second time, “whatdoesshe want?”
He stopped the carriage outside the town of St. Florent at the end of the long causeway built across the marsh, where the wind swept now from the open bay with a salt flavour to it. He alighted, and took Denise's bag, rightly concluding that Mademoiselle Brun would prefer to carry her own.
“Follow me,” he said, taking a delight in being as curt as Mademoiselle Brun herself, and in denying them the explanations they were too proud to demand.
They walked abreast through the narrow street dimly lighted by a single lamp swinging on a gibbet at the corner, turned sharp to the left, and found themselves suddenly at the water's edge. A few boats bumped lazily at some steps where the water lapped. It was blowing hard out in the bay, but this corner was protected by a half-ruined house built on a projecting rock.
The priest looked round.
“Hé! là-bas!” he called out, in a guarded voice. But he received no answer.
“Wait here,” he said to the two women. “I will fetch him from the café.” And he disappeared.
Denise and mademoiselle stood in silence listening to the lapping of the water and the slow, muffled bumping of the boats until the abbé returned, followed by a man who slouched along on bare feet.
“Yes,” he was saying, “the yacht was there at sunset. I saw her myself lying just outside the point. But it is folly to try and reach her to-night; wait till the morning, Monsieur l'Abbé.”
“And find her gone,” answered the priest. “No, no; we embark to-night, my friend. If these ladies are willing, surely a St. Florent man will not hold back?”
“But you have not told these ladies of the danger. The wind is blowing right into the bay; we cannot tack out against it. It will take me two hours to row out single-handed with some one baling out the whole time.”
“But I will pull an oar with you,” answered Susini. “Come, show us which is your boat. Mademoiselle Brun will bale out, and the young lady will steer. We shall be quite a family party.”
There was no denying a man who took matters into his own hands so energetically.
“You can pull an oar?” inquired the boatman, doubtfully.
“I was born at Bonifacio, my friend. Come, I will take the bow oar if you will find me an oilskin coat. It will not be too dry up in the bows to-night.”
And, like most masterful people—right or wrong—the abbé had his way, even to the humble office assigned to Mademoiselle Brun.
“You will need to remove your glove and bare your arm,” explained the boatman, handing her an old tin mug. “But you will not find the water cold. It is always warmer at night. Thus the good God remembers poor fishermen. The seas will come over the bows when we round this corner; they will rise up and hit the abbé in the back, which is his affair; then they will wash aft into this well, and from that you must bale it out all the time. When the seas come in, you need not be alarmed, nor will it be necessary to cry out.”
“Such instructions, my friend,” said the priest, scrambling into his oilskin coat, “are unnecessary to mademoiselle, who is a woman of discernment.”
“But I try not to be,” snapped Mademoiselle Brun. She knew which women are most popular with men.
“As for you, mademoiselle,” said the boatman to Denise, “keep the boat pointed at the waves, and as each one comes to you, cut it as you would cut a cream cheese. She will jerk and pull at you, but you must not be afraid of her; and remember that the highest wave may be cut.”
“That young lady is not afraid of much,” muttered the abbé, settling to his oar.
They pulled slowly out to the end of the rocky promontory, upon which a ruined house still stands, and shot suddenly out into a howling wind. The first wave climbed leisurely over the weather-bow, and slopped aft to the ladies' feet; the second rose up, and smote the abbé in the back.
“Cut them, mademoiselle; cut them!” shouted the boatman.
And at intervals during that wild journey he repeated the words, unceremoniously spitting the salt water from his lips. The abbé, bending his back to the work and the waves, gave a short laugh from time to time, that had a ring in it to make Mademoiselle Brun suddenly like the man—the fighting ring of exaltation which adapts itself to any voice and any tongue. For nearly an hour they rowed in silence, while mademoiselle baled the water out, and Denise steered with steady eyes piercing the darkness.
“We are quite close to it,” she said at length; for she had long been steering towards a light that flickered feebly across the broken water.
In a few moments they were alongside, and, amidst confused shouting of orders, the two ladies were half lifted, half dragged on board. The abbé followed them.
“A word with you,” he said, taking Mademoiselle Brun unceremoniously by the arm, and leading her apart. “You will be met by friends on your arrival at St. Raphael to-morrow. And when you are free to do so, will you do me a favour?”
“Yes.”
“Find Lory de Vasselot, wherever he may be.”
“Yes,” answered Mademoiselle Brun.
“And tell him that I went to the Chateau de Vasselot and found it empty.”
Mademoiselle reflected for some moments.
“Yes; I will do that,” she said at length.
“Thank you.”
The abbé stared hard at her beneath his dripping hat for a moment, and then, turning abruptly, moved towards the gangway, where his boat lay in comparatively smooth water at the lee-side of the yacht. Denise was speaking to a man who seemed to be the captain.
Mademoiselle Brun followed the abbé.
“By the way—” she said.
Susini stopped, and looked into her face, dimly lighted by the moon, which peeped at times through riven clouds.
“Whom should you have found in the château?” she asked.
“Ah! that I will not tell you.”
Mademoiselle Brun gave a short laugh.
“Then I shall find out. Trust a woman to find out a secret.”
The abbé was already over the bulwark, so that only his dark face appeared above, with the water running off it. His eyes gleamed in the moonlight.
“And a priest to keep one,” he answered. And he leapt down into the boat.
“Love ... gives to every power a double powerAbove their functions and their offices.”
“Ah!” said Mademoiselle Brun, as she stepped on deck the next morning. And the contrast between the gloomy departure from Corsica and the sunny return to France was strong enough, without further comment from this woman of few words.
The yacht was approaching the little harbour of St. Raphael at half speed on a sea as blue and still as the Mediterranean of any poet's dream. The freshness of morning was in the air—the freshness of Provence, where the days are hot and the nights cool, and there are no mists between the one and the other. Almost straight ahead, the little town of Fréjus (where another Corsican landed to set men by the ears) stood up in sharp outline against the dark pinewoods of Valescure, with the thin wood-smoke curling up from a hundred chimneys. To the left, the flat lands of Les Arcs half hid the distant heights of Toulon; and, to the right, headland after headland led the eye almost to the frontier of Italy along the finest coast-line in the world. Every shade of blue was on sky or sea or mountain, while the deep morning shadows were transparent and almost luminous. From the pinewoods a scent of resin swept seaward, mingled with the subtle odour of the tropic foliage near the shore. The sky was cloudless. This was indeed the smiling land of France.
Denise, who had followed mademoiselle on deck, stood still and drank it all in; for such sights and scents have a deep eloquence for the young, which older hearts can only touch from the outside, vaguely and intangibly, like the memory of a perfume.
Denise had slept well, and Mademoiselle Brun said she had slept enough for an old woman. A cheery little stewardess had brought them coffee soon after daylight, and had answered a few curt questions put to her by Mademoiselle Brun.
“Yes; the yacht was the yacht of the Baron de Mélide, and thebête-noire, by the same token, of madame, who hated the sea.”
And madame was at the château near Fréjus, where Monsieur le Baron had installed her on the outbreak of the war, and would assuredly be on the pier at St. Raphael to meet them. And God only knew where Monsieur le Baron was. He had gone, it was said, to the war in some civil capacity.
As they stood on deck, Denise soon perceived the little pier where there were, even at this early hour, a few of those indefatigable Mediterranean Waltons who fish and fish and catch nothing, all through the sunny day. Presently Mademoiselle Brun caught sight of a small dot of colour which seemed to move spasmodically up and down.
“I see the parasol,” she said, “of Jane de Mélide. What good friends we have!”
And presently they were near enough to wave a handkerchief in answer to the Baroness de Mélide's vigorous salutations. The yacht crept round the pier-head, and was soon made fast to a small white buoy. While a boat was being lowered, the baroness, in a gay Parisian dress, walked impatiently backwards and forwards, waved her parasol, and called out incoherent remarks, which Mademoiselle Brun answered by a curt gesture of the hand.
“My poor friend!” exclaimed the baroness, as she embraced Mademoiselle Brun. “My dear Denise, you are a brave woman. I have heard all about you.”
And her quick, dancing eyes took in at a glance that Denise had come against her will, and Mademoiselle Brun had brought her. Of which Denise was ignorant, for the sunshine and brightness of the scene affected her and made her happy.
“Surely,” she said, as they walked the length of the pier together, “the bad news has been exaggerated. The war will soon be over and we shall be happy again.”
“Do not talk of it,” cried the baroness. “It is a horror. I saw Lory, after Wörth, and that was enough war for me. And, figure to yourself!—I am all alone in this great house. It is a charity to come and stay with me. Lory has gone to the front. My husband, who said he loved me—where is he? Bonjour, and he is gone. He leaves me without a regret. And I, who cry my eyes out; or would cry them out if I were a fool—such as mademoiselle thinks me. Ah! I do not know what has come to all the men.”
“But I do,” said mademoiselle, who had seen war before.
And the baroness, looking at that still face, laughed her gay little inconsequent laugh.
A carriage was waiting for them in the shade of the trees on the market-place, its smart horses and men forming a strong contrast to the untidy town and slip-shod idlers. As usual, a game of bowls was in progress, and absorbed all the attention of the local intelligence.
“We have half an hour through the pine trees,” said the baroness, settling herself energetically on the cushions. “And, do you know, I am thankful to see you. I thought you would be prevented coming.”
She glanced at Denise as she spoke, and with a suddenly grave face, leant forward, and whispered—
“The news is bad—the news is bad. All this has been organized by Lory and my husband, who told me, in so many words, that they must have us where they can find us at a moment's notice. In case—ah, mon Dieu! I do not know what is going to happen to us all.”
“Then are we to be moved about, like ornaments, from one safe place to another?” asked Denise, with a laugh which was not wholly spontaneous.
“I have never been treated as an ornament yet,” put in Mademoiselle Brun, “and it is perhaps rather late to begin now.”
Denise looked at her inquiringly.
“Yes,” said the little woman, quietly. “I am going to the war—if Jane will take care of you while I am away.”
“And why should not I go too?” asked Denise.
“Because you are too young and too pretty, my dear—since you ask a plain question,” replied the baroness, impulsively. Then she turned towards mademoiselle. “You know,” she said, “that my precious stupid is organizing a field hospital.”
“I thought he would find something to do,” answered mademoiselle, curtly.
“Yes,” said the baroness, slowly, “yes—because when he was a boy he had for governess a certain little woman whose teaching was deeds, not words. And he is paying for it himself. And we shall all be ruined.”
She spread out her rich dress, lay back in her luxurious carriage, and smiled on Mademoiselle Brun with something that was not mirth at the back of her brown eyes.
“I shall go to him,” said mademoiselle. And the baroness made no reply for some moments.
“Do you know what he said?” she asked. “He said we shall want women—old ones. I know one old woman who will come!”
Mademoiselle was buttoning her cotton gloves and did not seem to hear.
“It was, of course, Lory,” went on the baroness, “who encouraged him and told him how to go about it. And then he went back to the front to fight. Mon Dieu! he can fight—that Lory!”
“Where is he?” asked mademoiselle. And the baroness spread out her gloved hands.
“At the front—I cannot tell you more.”
And mademoiselle did not speak again. She was essentially a woman of her word. She had undertaken to find Lory and give him that odd, inexplicable message from the abbé. She had not undertaken much in her narrow life; but she had usually accomplished, in a quiet, mouse-like way, that to which she set her hand. And now, as she drove through the smiling country, with which it was almost impossible to associate the idea of war, she was planning how she could get to the front and work there under the Baron de Mélide, and find Lory de Vasselot.
“They are somewhere near a little place called Sedan,” said the baroness.
And Mademoiselle Brun set out that same day for the little place called Sedan; then known vaguely as a fortress on the Belgian frontier, and now for ever written in every Frenchman's heart as the scene of one of those stupendous catastrophes to which France seems liable, and from which she alone has the power of recovery. For, whatever the history of the French may be, it has never been dull reading, and she has shown the whole world that one may carry a brave and a light heart out of the deepest tragedy.
By day and night Mademoiselle Brun, sitting upright in a dark corner of a second-class carriage, made her way northward across France. No one questioned her, and she asked no one's help. A silent little old woman assuredly attracts less attention to her comings and goings than any other human being. And on the third day mademoiselle actually reached Chalons, which many a more important traveller might at this time have failed to do. She found the town in confusion, the civilians bewildered, the soldiers sullen. No one knew what an hour might bring forth. It was not even known who was in command. The emperor was somewhere near, but no one knew where. General officers were seeking their army-corps. Private soldiers were wandering in the streets seeking food and quarters. The railway station was blocked with stores which had been hastily discharged from trucks wanted elsewhere. And it was no one's business to distribute the stores.
Mademoiselle Brun wandered from shop to shop, gathering a hundred rumours but no information. “The emperor is dying—Macmahon is wounded,” a butcher told her, as he mechanically sharpened his knife at her approach, though he had not as much as a bone in his shop to sell her.
She stopped a cuirassier riding a lame horse, his own leg hastily bandaged with a piece of coloured calico.
“What regiment?” she asked.
“I have no regiment. There is nothing left. You see in me the colonel, and the majors, and the captains. I am the regiment,” he answered with a laugh that made mademoiselle bite her steady lip.
“Where are you going?”
“I don't know. Can you give me a little money?”
“I can give you a franc. I have not too much myself. Where have you come from?”
“I don't know. None of us knew where we were.”
He thanked her, observed that he was very hungry, and rode on. She found a night's lodging at a seed-chandler's who had no seeds to sell.
“They will not need them this year,” he said. “The Prussians are riding over the corn.”
The next morning the indomitable little woman went on her way towards Sedan in a forage-cart which was going to the front. She told the corporal in charge that she was attached to the Baron de Mélide's field hospital and must get to her work.
“You will not like it when you get there, my brave lady,” said the man, good-humouredly, making room for her.
“I shall like it better than doing nothing here,” she replied.
And so they set forth through the country heavy with harvest. It was the second of September. The corn was ripe, the leaves were already turning; for it had been a dry summer, and since April hardly any rain had fallen.
It was getting late in the afternoon when they met a man in a dog-cart driving at a great pace. He pulled up when he saw them. His face was the colour of lead, his eyes were startlingly bloodshot.
“This parishioner has been badly scared,” muttered the soldier who was driving Mademoiselle Brun.
“Where are you going?” asked the stranger in a high, thin voice.
“To Sedan.”
“Then turn back,” he cried; “Sedan is no place for a woman. It is a hell on earth. I saw it all, mon Dieu. I saw it all. I was at Bazeilles. I saw the children thrown into the windows of the burning houses. I saw the Bavarians shoot our women in the streets. I saw the troops rush into Sedan like rabbits into their holes, and then the Prussians bombarded the town. They had six hundred guns all round the town, and they fired upon that little place which was packed full like a sheep-pen. It is not war—it is butchery. What is the good God doing? What is He thinking of?”
And the man, who had the pasty face of a clerk or a commercial traveller, raised his whip to heaven in a gesture of fierce anger. Mademoiselle Brun looked at him with measuring eyes. He was almost a man at that moment. But perhaps her standard of manhood was too high.
“And is Sedan taken?” she asked quietly.
“Sedan is taken. Macmahon is wounded. The emperor is prisoner, and the whole French army has surrendered. Ninety thousand men. The Prussians had two hundred and forty thousand men. Ah! That emperor—that scoundrel!”
Mademoiselle Brun looked at him coldly, but without surprise. She had dealt with Frenchmen all her life, and probably expected that the fallen should be reviled—an unfortunate characteristic in an otherwise great national spirit.
“And the cavalry?” she asked.
“Ah!” cried the man, and again his dull eye flashed. “The cavalry were splendid. They tried to cut their way out. They passed through the Prussian cavalry and actually faced the infantry, but the fire was terrible. No man ever saw or heard anything like it. The cuirassiers were mown down like corn. The cavalry exists no longer, madame, but its name is immortal.”
There was nothing poetic about Mademoiselle Brun, who listened rather coldly.
“And you,” she asked, “what are you? you are assuredly a Frenchman?”
“Yes—I am a Frenchman.”
“And yet your back is turned,” said Mademoiselle Brun, “towards the Prussians.”
“I am a writer,” explained the man—“a journalist. It is my duty to go to some safe place and write of all that I have seen.”
“Ah!” said Mademoiselle Brun. “Let us, my friend,” she said, turning to her companion on the forage-cart, “proceed towards Sedan. We are fortunately not in the position of monsieur.”